Grand ambitions displayed on a 'Grand Scale'

Even atop stepladders, workers could barely reach the tops of several monumental 16th century prints they were hanging at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center of Wellesley College.

Chris Bergeron

Even atop stepladders, workers could barely reach the tops of several monumental 16th century prints they were hanging at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center of Wellesley College.

Visitors to the impressive new exhibit, "Grand Scale," might justly feel they're entering the high-vaulted Renaissance cathedrals and castles depicted in these imposing and glorious prints.

Rising more than 11 feet above the gallery floor, the show's titanic centerpiece, "The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I," conveys the converging ambitions of a new era of artists and patrons who believed size mattered.

Yet the exhibit is equally ambitious by bringing together rarely-seen and mostly vanished mural-sized works from 15 American institutions to document the explosive growth of printed imagery in Europe in the 16th century.

Subtitled "Monumental Prints in the Age of Durer and Titian," it challenges viewers to engage complex works from a very different time on several different levels.

It includes 48 large composite prints by 42 artists, often working in teams that made remarkably ornate murals, tapestries, an astronomical chart, an illustration of fortifications, friezes and even wallpaper.

"Grand Scale," which opened Wednesday, March 19, was organized by Elizabeth Wyckoff, assistant director of the Davis Museum and curator of prints and drawings, and Larry Silver, Farquhar professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania.

Wyckoff said the decision to bring the exhibit had "a curious genesis" starting more than 30 years ago when Silver, who was then at Northwestern University, was involved in a groundbreaking 1970s show of giant woodcuts in Germany.

She explained the prints in the current show "are not just large but are all made from one or more blocks of prints." While the dimensions of 15th century prints were restricted by the size of available paper and presses to duplicate images, new 16th century technologies fueled the artistic ambitions of a new generation of printmakers, their patrons and customers. As new technologies emerged, printmakers used more efficient methods, progressing from woodblocks to etching and finally engraving.

The works in the show, Wyckoff said, created from 1470 to the 1630s, represent "a long century" for German, Italian and Dutch and Flemish artists from the Netherlands who worked in an enlarged scale by incorporating "blocks" of prints to build the monumental compositions on display.

For example, the 9-by-11-foot "Triumphal Arch" by Albrecht Durer was initially printed from 192 blocks and then assembled like pieces in a puzzle at several sites. Like modern prints, many of these images were printed in multiple "runs" for display at several locations. Wyckoff said the exhibit has been organized geographically with Italian and German prints on separate gallery walls and Dutch and Flemish prints on another.

Another section includes striking "processional" prints, featuring panoramic horizontal scenes such as cavalry parades or Jan Saenrendam's marvelously detailed "The Punishment of Niobe," an engraving printed from eight plates based on an earlier work by Polidoro de Caravaggio.

Like a Donald Trump vanity show, the "Triumphal Arch" is essentially Maximilian's inflated resume writ very large with one side celebrating his royal genealogy and the other recording his somewhat "embellished" military and civic triumphs.

In an age of dreary conceptual artists sharing their public angst through solipsistic installations, Maximilian's hubris is both staggering and refreshing even if, like Ozymandias, the billboard-sized work celebrating him outlives the man.

Like Lemuel Gulliver visiting the giant land of Brobdingnag, viewers might profitably regard these prints as picture windows looking onto the birth pangs of a new age with grand prospects. Yet one mustn't forget early 16th century artists were still employing Classical Age conventions, so don't be surprised if Moses and his gang on the shores of the Red Sea resemble Flemish burghers.

Wyckoff stressed the show's prints portrayed not just religious subjects and themes but historical events, mythological tales and one of the first "bird's eye view" maps of Venice that accurately depicted then-existing streets, buildings, plazas, canals and churches as well as Mercury and Neptune lolling god-like about the city.

Like the prints themselves, the cast of characters on display is monumental.

Look for Moses and Adam, satyrs with cloven feet and the Virgin Mother plus pulchritudinous nymphs decorating wallpaper for the Playboy Palazzo of some Renaissance-era Hugh Hefner. While the hissing serpent wraps itself around a tree, an Amazonian-sized Eve who could swamp tunics with Anna Nicole Smith fondles an apple the size of a bowling ball.

As if driving through Monument Valley for the first time, it's too easy to get lost in the humbling "Grand Scale" of these prints without, at least, sensing the laborious craftsmanship that created such wonders.

Take a closer look at the dazzling detail of the ship's rigging in the 1499 colored woodcut "Battle of Zonchio" or the multitudes of figures in Lucantonio degli Uberti's "Triumph of Christ" from 1516.

The show will remain at the Davis Museum until June 8 and then travel to Yale University (Sept. 9 to Nov. 30) and on to the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Jan. 31 to April 26, 2009).

If you thought Andy Warhol's silk screen "Campbell Soup Cans" heralded a revolutionary age of print art, check out this show.

But come prepared to crane your neck at "Grand Scale" art and then scrutinize details of near-microscopic exactitude.

"It's not your average print show," Wyckoff said.

No, it isn't. It's the one you must see before it leaves.

THE ESSENTIALS:

The Davis Museum is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Wednesday until 8 p.m. It is open Sunday noon to 4 p.m.

Admission is free. Parking is free in the lot behind the museum with additional parking available in the Davis Parking Garage.

For docent information, call 781-283-3382. the museum and Collins Cafe are wheelchair accessible. For special needs, contact Jim Wice, director of Disability Services at 781-283-2434 or jwice@wellesley.edu.